Hart signaled to another officer.
“Radio the station. We’ve got a witness who found a blue Volkswagen Beetle at the bottom of Frasier Gorge. We need confirmation."
Homer looked up sharply at Hart’s comment. He stood, Bette forgotten on the grass.
“Someone found my daughter’s car? Who? You?” He turned to face the bearded man whose eyes darted between the police officers.
“Yes, sir. I found a little blue Beetle Bug at the bottom of Frasier Gorge.”
Homer sprang forward and grabbed his shirt.
“Was she in it? Was Crystal in the car?” he demanded.
Alvin stepped back, blinking at Homer’s hand as if a tarantula had leapt onto his chest.
“Homer,” Hart said, touching him. “Please release this man’s shirt.”
Homer’s shocked eyes turned to Hart and then back to his hand. He let the fabric go, his arm dropping heavily to his side.
“I didn’t see anyone in the car,” Alvin told them. “I read the paper. I saw the cops was lookin’ for a little blue Bug so I didn’t touch nothin’. I climbed out of the canyon and called the station first thing this morning. They told me to come here, so that’s what I did.”
More than an hour passed before Officer Hart returned.
Bette didn’t have to ask if it was Crystal’s car.
Homer stood, clutching his Styrofoam cup of coffee.
“The license plate is a match,” Hart told him.
Homer crumpled the cup, cold coffee spilling over his hand. Bette watched his profile as everything contracted, his mouth and eyes screwing tight against the news.
Bette had known it was Crystal’s car the moment she heard Alvin’s story. Blue VW Bugs weren’t common. Weston Meeks had taken Crystal to Frasier Gorge. There were too many coincidences for it to be a coincidence.
“Was Crystal…?” Homer asked, his voice almost too low to hear. He didn’t finish the question.
Hart shook his head. “She wasn’t in the car. We’ve done a preliminary search of the surrounding area, but a larger search is in the works. Right now, we’ve got to get the car out. In the meantime, the chief is organizing the search. There are already officers out there cordoning off the woods. Are you familiar with Frasier Gorge?”
Homer shook his head.
Hart looked at Bette.
“I’ve never been there, but Crystal told me about it,” she said.
Hart’s expression perked. “She liked to go there?”
Bette shook her head. “Weston Meeks took her there once for a date.”
Hart frowned, but didn’t ask more.
“We’ve canceled the search here. Frasier Gorge is a better use of our resources right now. If that’s a dead end, we’ll reconsider searching here, but…” He offered his empty hands. “In the meantime, you both might as well head home, eat some breakfast. I’ll call if we find anything.”
Homer’s shoulders slumped, and he sat on the park bench next to Bette. He still clutched his crumpled cup in his hand.
11
Then
Weston stopped mid-pour, a glob of pancake batter splattering his bare foot.
He’d followed Crystal to her apartment the night before and neither of them had said a word as they walked up the carpeted stairs to the second floor. She’d unlocked the door and stepped inside. Before she’d even turned on a light, his hands hand found her. He’d stripped her slowly, whispering poetry as he kissed every inch of her skin.
They’d made love on her living room floor, and again in her bedroom. And one last time that morning before he jumped out of bed and announced he was making Crystal breakfast.
His hair, more golden than brown in the morning sun, rested on the smooth slope of his shoulders. The muscles in his back shifted as he lowered a ladle into the batter and poured it into the pan. It sizzled and popped.
He turned and caught her watching him.
“I ache for you, Crystal,” he said as if in wonderment at his own emotions. “You’re right there and still…” He put a hand to his chest. “It’s as if you’ve awakened me.”
Crystal sat naked except for Weston’s ”Get Lit” t-shirt, which he’d left discarded on her bedroom floor the night before. The chair pressed cold against her legs and bottom, but her body prickled at his words. She too felt the ache, the deep calling from within her. A foreign sensation, so alien she wondered if Wes had ignited an internal flame that had been dark her entire life.
How many men had she dated? A few she’d even thought she loved, but now… now she understood she’d been terribly wrong.
She stood and walked to him, softening against his hard chest, nuzzling her face into the crook of his neck. He held her, and his breath whooshed soft in her ear. The pancake in the skillet released a slightly noxious odor as it burned.
She didn’t care. Neither of them cared. She’d never eat again if it meant they could stand there, suspended in time and space, holding one another.
The phone rang and she jumped, bumping his chin with the top of her head.
“No,” he murmured, though she hadn’t pulled away to answer it and she didn’t intend to.
A charred odor drifted up from the pancake on the stove.
Weston slipped a hand away and deftly flipped it with the spatula revealing a blackened pancake.
Crystal giggled into his chest.
The phone rang until her message machine picked up.
They both listened to her voice on the machine followed by Bette’s.
“Hey, call me. A girl I work with is having a birthday, and she loves pigs. I was thinking of giving her one of Mom’s. The one with the top hat. Just a thought. If you don’t want me to, I won’t. Love ya, bye.”
“Who was that?” Weston asked, still keeping one arm around Crystal as he attempted a second, less scorched pancake.
“My sister, Bette.”
“And your mom has pet pigs? One that wears a top hat, no less?”
Crystal sighed against him. “Our mom died. Cancer took her when I was eleven. Her mother collected pigs, figurines, not the live ones, and my mom kept a lot of them after my grandmother died. Bette is now the keeper of the pigs.”
“I’m sorry you lost your mom,” he murmured, kissing the top of her head.
Crystal pulled away and looked into his eyes.
“Thank you,” she said. “Do you still have your parents, Wes?”
He’d mentioned his parents’ divorce, but she knew little else about the life of Weston Meeks.
He furrowed his brow as he flipped a pancake. This one formed a perfectly round golden disc.
“My mom left when I was ten. I have no idea if she’s still alive. My dad died when I was seventeen.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said, squeezing him harder.
He stroked her back.
“It’s been a long time. It hurt when I was young but getting older helped me see her side. Now that I’m a man, I’ve forgiven both of them. My mother for leaving. Life with my father was hard, and she never wanted to be a mother. My dad was a workaholic and a very distant person emotionally. He paid the bills, and that’s about it. My mom…” he trailed off. “I think she just woke up one morning and decided she wanted a different life.”
He pulled Crystal away and guided her back to her chair.
“I want to keep holding you,” he assured her, “but if I do, we’re eating blackened pancakes.
She laughed.
“Anyway,” he continued returning to the stove. “She sent cards for the first few years and then…” He shrugged. “Nothing.”
“Did you ever try to find her?” Crystal asked.